"Star Wars" will be making its way back to the big screen now that The Walt Disney Company has acquired Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion USD.

Disney said it is buying Lucasfilm Ltd. with cash and stock, and the deal includes Lucasfilm's high-tech production companies (Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound) and the rights to the "Indiana Jones" franchise.

Even though George Lucas, the creator of "Star Wars" and founder of Lucasfilm Ltd., said he was done making new versions of his mega popular epic space opera, he's going to allow Disney to bring "Star Wars" back to life.

Disney is currently working on a new "Star Wars" trilogy, beginning with "Episode 7." The new episode is due out in 2015, and Episodes 8 and 9 will shortly follow. According to Disney, the new trilogy will follow Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo beyond "Return of the Jedi," which was the third film in the original trilogy (but is chronologically the sixth film in the franchise).

"For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see 'Star Wars' passed from one generation to the next," said Lucas. "It's now time for me to pass 'Star Wars' on to a new generation of filmmakers. I've always believed that 'Star Wars' could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime."

Kathleen Kennedy, the current co-chairman of Lucasfilm, will become the president of the unit. She will also be executive producer for the new trilogy.

Kennedy has been working with Lucas and a team of writers to discuss the storyline for "Episode 7." Kennedy said it's essential to have Lucas present as a key advisor during the making of the next trilogy, and she even referred to him as "her Yoda." Lucas has provided his story lines for the new trilogy.

"I always said I wasn't going to do any more and that's true, because I'm not going to do any more, but that doesn't mean I'm unwilling to turn it over to Kathy to do more," said Lucas.

Lucas has received quite a bit of criticism in the recent past due to his decisions involving "Star Wars." Despite creating the hugely popular original trilogy in the 1970s and 80s, he quickly became the bad guy when the second trilogy was released. Many fans disliked the new story line, which took place prior to the original trilogy. Fans also hated new characters, such as Jar Jar Binks.

To make matters worse, Lucas changed some key details in the original trilogy (such as the scene where Greedo takes the first shot at Han Solo in a bar) and released 3D versions of the movies earlier this year, marking Lucas as a "sell out."

As much as they have butchered ep IV,V,& VI repeatedly for "special editions", and good God the disappointment ep I,II,& III were, do you really expect them to follow the books and stay true to the source material?

Regardless, I do love Star Wars and I'll give it a chance but I dont have high hopes.

Star Wars had no "source material". The books came after the movie was made. As a teenager in the 90s I read Timothy Zahn's trilogy set a few years after the original movies, and at the time I thought they were excellent, and the natural material on which to base a new trilogy of movies. They are quite dark, even more than Empire Strikes Back (my favorite SW movie by far). Knowing Disney however, I don't have high hopes at all.

I think Disney did as good of a job as they could do remaking Tron (after all, it's hard to make a "bad" film when you spend 250+ million...unless you're Michael Bay)

But in all fairness, Episode III was pretty good. All three new episodes were ok but obviously we're talking about a different time and a different audience. It is impossible to keep the original audience happy while also catering to a new audience. Look at the original Star Wars, for example. If it were never release, and released today as new material, everyone would laugh.

As is with all sci-fi, there's always some balding overweight critic that can't use it to successfully escape his awful reality and has to throw jabs at it.

Episode 3 was not good. It was barely better than 1, and I shudder to think how anything could be worse than 2. Go watch the Red Letter Media review on the prequel trilogy. I myself did not know how incredibad those movies were before it was explained to me--I just knew they didn't sit well.

For the record, the actors don't have to be the same ones from 4-6 for the sequels to be good. What is required is that the movies stick to a basic, understandable, emotionally compelling formula--identical to the original trilogy. The lightsaber fights are a key example of this. In the original trilogy, the fights were about emotions and character interaction. In the prequels, it was just a martial-arts exhibition.

I there is only one battle scene in the entire movie, that's probably a good thing. We need to get attached to the characters. Lucas has completely forgotten that.

I thought the prequels were decent if you can forgive mitochlorians and jar jar. What is total trash is the Clone wars animated series it lowers the bar for the next generation of star wars fans. Either way can disney screw up the Star Wars franchise and worse than Lucas himself? his latest work on the series makes you wonder if it truly was him that came up with Star Wars...clueless.

For me, Star Wars ended after The Empire Strikes Back. All rubbish after that. Still don't understand that it attracts people after all the damage Lucas did to it after TESB. When I was a kid, I seem to remember Lucas saying that there were going to be 9 films, with 3 more to follow the middle episodes...anyone else remember that?

The criticism of episodes I-III is partly politically motivated. These films dramatize and sensationalize a transition to outright tyranny that is occurring in almost the same way in the real world. Most of these critics simply cannot comprehend the intricacies of the plot, because doing so threatens their paradigm. It invokes cognitive dissonance. They just cannot get into the story because doing so might cause an epiphany or two; it might cause them to question their own mealticket. And moreover, they cannot grasp the weight of the plot, or its historical significance, because they are trained to be blind to the concepts presented. Trained by self interest. Like most of the dumbed down masses they dont want anything to do with any Greater Truth, and will invoke cognitive dissonance when any subject or story gets to close to the truth. So they of course arent going to respect the story. The story is something that is playing out in the real world right now, for those not too frickin ignorant or blind to be able to see it. I'm not too terribly impressed by the acting, but then again the acting in any star wars film was never great.

Why not just come out and say what you mean. I'm guessing but here goes:

The UN is the Galactic Empire?The US is the Galactic Republic (maybe the Western World)?The UN is plotting to destroy the US (Western World) first by political takeover, then by force later?Once that happens, the UN will hunt down and kill all of the Jedi? :)

I dont think you give people enough credit. Most people understand the story and where it draws it's inpirations from. It's the endless CGI filler crap, horrible acting, the gigantic holes GL punched into the SW mythos, that ultimately made the movies just bad.

Well Disney did make 'The Avengers' and if that's the angle they will make ep's 7, 8, & 9 with then Star Wars will be dumbed down even more. Not that 'The Avengers' was a bad movie or anything, it lacked depth. The story and mythology are EVERYTHING to Star Wars and to drift away from that kills it... kind of like the miticlorian thing brought into ep 1 ("This boy has the highest sample of miticlorian ever"...wtf is a miticlorian??)

I agree Michael Bay will direct it but the focus will be on ships blowing up in outer space (BOOM!) and completely ridiculous force powers will be added (OOOH!). Action without dialogue or purpose, and no story whatsoever. All about the BOOMS and oooohs and ahhhs.

quote: ("This boy has the highest sample of miticlorian ever"...wtf is a miticlorian??)

Qui-Gon explains it a few minutes later:

ANAKIN : Master, sir...I've been wondering...what are midi-chlorians?QUI-GON : Midi-chlorians are a microcopic lifeform that reside within allliving cells and communicates with the Force.ANAKIN : They live inside of me?QUI-GON : In your cells. We are symbionts with the midi-chlorians.ANAKIN : Symbionts?QUI-GON : Life forms living together for mutual advantage. Without themidi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of theForce. They continually speak to you, telling you the will of the Force.ANAKIN : They do??QUI-GON : When you learn to quiet your mind, you will hear them speaking toyou.ANAKIN : I don't understand.QUI-GON : With time and training, Annie...you will.

The Avengers was only good because it had the depth of a blade of grass and plenty of action. Most of the development of the characters and background took place in prior Marvel films.

Disney is not known for making good movies. They do however fund studios like Marvel that do a decent job. Star Wars != Marvel though. We tried the tons of action and little plot and we got the prequel trilogy that everyone hated.

Frankly I think Disney will hose up Star Wars worse than Lucas ever did. At least with Lucas he left the post ROTJ timeline alone, Disney is going to fubar that and piss all over the novels that were far better than any of the movies.

If they will stick to Lucas' original story line for the last trilogy which was released to provide the backbone for the Thrawn trilogy of books then it might be good. The problem will be getting Disney to put out such a dark series of movies which would be the best plots but not so good for children.

Their best bet to succeed would be to fork the series and make the darker Thrawn trilogy for adults while splitting out something along the lines of the Young Jedi Academy series following the Solo children geared for the youth market.

The whole Star Wars story has so much depth that it can be handled many different ways to reach a broad range of audiences. It seems so far that Lucas Films will still be headed up by the current exec so maybe they will have enough control still to make it work separate from Disney itself. I wonder if there has been any more followup to the rumors of a live action TV series that was supposed to already be in pre-production?

The Star Wars novel was written from the script of Episode IV A New Hope. After that came Splinter of the Mind's Eye written by Allen Dean Foster as filler between Ep IV and The Empire Strikes Back. There weren't any more novels until Return of the Jedi, after that there were several more mostly following Luke Skywalker up until they released the plots for what Lucas had drawn up for EP VII, VIII and IX which was the Thrawn Trilogy where the New Republic was beginning and the remnants of the Empire were engaged in their final battles.

I could go to my bookshelf and list them all in order either chronologically by publish date or in the timeline of the story order, but I am afraid I would run out of room here lol. I guess I am just too much of a fan/geek when it comes to Star Wars.

Of course it does. The original trilogy defined how everything that came after it is laid out. Numerous stories with the original characters after ep VI have been written, so there is source material for them to look at with regards to VII-IX.

The failure from a story point of view with the ep I-III is they strayed too far and there was so much pointless filler in those movies just for the sake of selling toys, that when it came down to the actual story of how Vader came to be it was all compressed into mainly EP III. The CGI made everything so damn cartoonish that it removes you from the SW world and never feels like it belongs. How many minutes of pure CGI crap was there in those movies?

Watching those was aken to expecting to drink a Coke and instead they gave you a Coke Zero. Taste similar but its not right.

It's not that they cant write a new story for EP VII-IX, but if they do not mind what has been written they risk discontinuity, and it will remove you from the world and the story they are trying to tell instead of pulling you in.

Did you read my post? I said "Star Wars" (as in the film, AKA Episode IV: A New Hope) was an original work. Then I mentioned a possible source for the next trilogy. There are numerous other novels written in the same universe, same characters, that could be used as well.

I'd rather pretend that Eps I-III were never made. Hopefully someone can make a prequel type of movie with the backstory of Han and Chewbacca, that would be much better (with no noticeable CGI, preferably).

quote: Chewbacca finally rips the arms off C3PO and beats him to death?

I would love to see that. I never really liked C3PO. Sometimes I think he runs on AC and DC, if you know what I mean. But that isn't the reason I don't like him. He would always push R2D2 around but when it came time to fight, he was a wuss.

You know, if they actually do the movies based on the YV wars... Which are set 30 or so years after Return of the Jedi in the books so the actors are the right ages... That would be pretty fantastic. Like.. so fantastic (I am assuming that's what you're alluding to with your avoided spoiler).

Chances of that happening? Probably the same as us discovering midichlorians are actual things. :(

Not a bad choice if you go that route. But one of my favorite things about the original trilogy was it was filled with relatively unknown actors. It seems like nobody today thinks they can make a good movie unless it's chocked full of famous people.

Fair enough. I'm not against relative unknowns. Actually from watching the new show Elementary, I think that guy would make a good Thrawn if what you're looking for is a British accent and a good ability to show a range of emotion. With the Thrawn character the most important emotion to be able to show is a complete lack of emotion.....maybe Keanu Reeves can do a British Accent....

You know what, when I first heard the news I was like "oh god, here we go again".

But then I started thinking, George Lucas might have saved Ep 7-9. Just by the fact that he so completely and clearly showed everyone how NOT to make Star Wars movies with the prequels. It would be impossible for someone else to do worst then he already did.

However I'm speaking from an artistic and theatrical viewpoint. Commercially, the movies were a huge hit and made billions collectively. Disney is a pretty big company so....I dunno, them dollar signs talk.

quote: I grew up with the the original trilogy but liked the new one's better.

Well it's pretty clear that you're an idiot and have no taste for movies, so not sure I can put stock in anything you're saying. Are you sure you "grew up" at all?

I was thinking about this last night. All the characters from the original movies are still alive and it would make sense to have the 7th movie take place some 30-40 years after the events of Return of the Jedi otherwise Episode VII would just be a continuation of the war against the Empire. Blowing up the second Death Star doesn't end the war.

I could see Luke (Hamill) having a significant role in the story as a "Jedi elder" or "new Yoda" type of character. I think it could be really great. I am of the opinion that Lucas was the problem with Episodes I - III and that with proper writing Episodes VII - IX could be excellent movies.

A lot of people thought the Star Trek reboot would be crap but I thoroughly enjoyed that movie and it was received extremely well overall.